New Job Announcement:

1) Islamic Search, effective AY 2012-2013

2) Arabic Search, effective AY 2012-2013

3) Taslimi Lecture, effective AY 2012-2013

 

Project "Creating a Sustainable Cuneiform Digital Library (CSCDL)" phase two funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

 The principals of a broad collaboration of Assyriologists, cultural heritage officials and information technology experts are pleased to announce their successful proposal to  the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (<http://www.mellon.org/>) for funding of the second phase of a project dedicated to the digital capture, persistent archiving and web dissemination of major cuneiform collections in the US, Europe and the Middle East. Work on this initiative began in April of 2009 and will continue under the current grant through June of 2013. The British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum and the Penn Museum will constitute the major centers of digital capture in phase two of CSCDL; in addition, the project foresees the initiation or continuation of scanning efforts at a number of substantial as well as more modest collections, and we welcome communications from collections officials or other interested colleagues concerning the use of our scanning teams to capture texts in Europe and North America.

 Paraphrasing from the project executive summary:

In this phase of the initiative, efforts will move beyond the development of standardized methods in the electronic capture and permanent data archiving of cuneiform collections across a broad array of public institutions to include innovative imaging strategies as well as a new focus on text annotation. We will build on an international network of cuneiform researchers and curators to digitize and archive new cuneiform data content.

 Major cuneiform collections will be digitally captured as a result of CSCDL. First, an electronic representation of the intellectual and political output of the Assyrian Empire will be achieved by completing the capture, supervised by Jon Taylor, of the Library of Ashurbanipal housed in the British Museum. Digitization of the full set of 31,500 Nineveh texts will be completed, followed up in the second year of phase two with the capture of 5,000 high-impact BM texts primarily from the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. The Nippur collection of the University of Pennsylvania will be completed and complemented with the capture of all remaining text artifacts in the Penn Museum, including a broad array of 3rd and 2nd millennium texts from Babylonia and ancient Iran. We expect to complete in this second phase the capture of the Semitic Museum at Harvard, to continue scanning the tablets in the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, and will work closely with David I. Owen at Cornell to assist in imaging the recent acquisition there of the Rosen collection. Bertrand Lafont, CNRS-Paris, will continue to coordinate the capture of continental European collections, starting with those of Turin and Montserrat. Additional collections targeted for capture will include, among others, the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, the Syracuse University Library (by UCLA staff), the University of Jena (Hilprecht collection) and the Musées d’art et d’histoire, Geneva (by Berlin staff).

 The project will include a center of capture and research led by Jacob L. Dahl of Oxford University, who, beyond directing the digitization of the full Ashmolean and other UK collections outside of London, will supervise the implementation of advanced Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) with Ashmolean and BM artifacts. The project's RTI dome and high-resolution digital camera will, further, be used to image subtle seal impressions on administrative documents, and high-impact literary and lexical texts in the Penn Museum collection. The processing, archiving and web posting of these collections, together with a substantive cross-section of further American and European collections, will be managed by a team of researchers at UCLA.

 Principal Investigators and postdoctoral-level associates:

At the University of California, Los Angeles:

Robert K. Englund, Professor of Assyriology; Director, Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative

Lance Allred, Postdoctoral Researcher

At the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia:

Stephen J. Tinney, Clark Research Associate Professor in Assyriology; Associate Curator,

Babylonian Section, Penn Museum; Director, Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary

Ilona Zsolnay, Postdoctoral Researcher and Project Manager

At the British Museum, London:

Jon Taylor, Curator of Cuneiform Collections at the Department of the Middle East

Sarah Logan, Assistant Curator

At Oxford University:

Jacob L. Dahl, University Lecturer in Assyriology

Klaus Wagensonner, Research Associate

At the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris:

Bertrand Lafont, Chercheur au CNRS

At the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin:

Jürgen Renn, Director, MPIWG; Professor, Humboldt University, Berlin

Ludek Vacin, Postdoctoral Researcher

 

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MEMORIAM: DR. HOSSEIN ZIAI

We regret to inform the friends, family, students and colleagues of Dr. Hossein Ziai of his passing on August 24, 2011.

Dr. Ziai was professor of Islamic and Iranian Studies, Inaugural holder of the Jahangir and Eleanor Amuzegar Chair in Iranian Studies and the director of Iranian Studies at UCLA, where he had taught since 1988. He received his Ph.D. in Islamic Philosophy from Harvard University in 1976. Prior to his position at UCLA, Dr. Ziai taught at Tehran University, Sharif University, Harvard University, Brown University, and Oberlin College.

Dr. Ziai’s numerous publications cover Islamic philosophy, the Iranian Illuminationist School of philosophy and “Persian Poetic Wisdom” defined in relation to the epistemology of knowledge by presence.

Dr. Ziai is survived by his wife Mahasti, his son Dadali, his daughter-in-law Stephanie and his grand-daughters Malia and Acacia.

Sincerely,
Bill Schniedewind

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Watch Audio Recording of Professor Ziai Funeral Service

To honor Professor Hossein Ziai’s memory, his family, friends and colleagues established the Hossein Ziai Memorial Fund and Scholarship to help support the education of future students of Iranian Studies.

        Donations to the fund can be sent to:

        UCLA Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

        361 Humanities Building

        Los Angeles, CA  90095

        Make checks payable to:  “UCLA Foundation”*

        *On Check Memo Line Write:  Hossein Ziai Fund

 

 

Archaeological Institute of America Names Best Practices in Site Preservation Award Winner: Dr. Giorgio Buccellati

For the Full Article, please click on this link

 

 

 

 

 

 

NELC Graduate Student Receives ARCE Best Student Paper Award

Emily Cole, graduate student in our Egyptology program, received the Best Student Paper Award at the 62nd American Egyptology Conference (ARCE) on April 1-3, 2011 in Chicago. In her paper “The Narmouthis Ostraca: Bilingual Texts from the Fayum,” she explores how Egyptian scribes experimented with the traditional Egyptian writing systems in their effort to adapt to the multilingual environment of Roman-period Egypt. She skillfully demonstrates how Demotic Egyptian and Greek interact linguistically and orthographically in the texts on these ostraca. This corpus of almost 1,500 ostraca represents the ‘missing link’ between Demotic and Coptic Egyptian.

This is the second year in a row that a UCLA Egyptology student is awarded the coveted prize. Last year the award was given to Eric Wells for his study of the private votive stelae from Asyut in Middle Egypt.

 Congratulations Emily!

New Publication by the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project

Peilstöcker, Martin, and Aaron Alexander Burke (editors). 2011    The History and Archaeology of Jaffa 1. The Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project 1. Monumenta Archaeologica 26. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, Los Angeles.

In 2007 the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project (JCHP) was established as a joint research endeavor of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among the project’s diverse aims is the publication of numerous excavations conducted in Jaffa since 1948 under the auspices of various governmental and research institutions such as the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums and its successor the Israel Antiquities Authority, as well as the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project. This, the first volume in the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project series, lays the groundwork for this initiative. Part I provides the historical, economic, and legal context for the JCHP’s development, while outlining its objectives and the unique opportunities that Jaffa offers researchers. The history of Jaffa and its region, and the major episodes of cultural change that affected the site and region are explored through a series of articles in Part II, including an illustrated discussion of historical maps of Jaffa from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Recent archaeological discoveries from Jaffa are included in Part III, while Part IV provides a first glimpse of the JCHP’s efforts to publish the Jacob Kaplan and Haya Ritter-Kaplan legacy from Jaffa. Together the twenty-five contributions to this work constitute the first major book-length publication to address the archaeology of Jaffa in more than sixty years since excavations were initiated at the site.

Dr. Jeremy Smoak selected for the Aviram Dorot Foundation Prize by ASOR

 

This exceptional paper won the 2011 inaugural Joseph Aviram Prize, which is sponsored by the Dorot Foundation and administered by the American Schools of Oriental Research.  The prize honors the memory of Joseph Aviram, who was the director of the Israel Exploration Society in Jerusalem. 

In addition to being awarded a monetary prize, the paper will be presented at the annual meetings of the American Schools of Oriental Research in San Francisco, November 17-19, 2011.

NELC is incredibly proud to have Dr. Jeremy Smoak as one of our esteemed Lecturers who has capture the hearts and attention of our undergraduate and graduate student body. 

Congratulations Dr. Smoak!

Dr. Latife Hagigi: Recipient of the 2011 UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award

 This award is only awarded to a select few exceptional faculty members on campus.  After a competetive review, Dr. Hagigi's teaching excellence has been recognized.  The department is honored to have such an extraordinary member in their department and cannot congratulate her enough.

Dr. Latifeh Hagigi is currently a Lecturer in the Iranian department and teaches several of the languages courses.  Quarter after quarter, her students have given her rave reviews and high marks on her evaluations for her dedication, commitment, and her genuine concern for the students. 

Jaffa Excavations

 Enrollment is now open for the 2011 summer archaeology field school in Jaffa, Israel. Excavate with the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project in Israel with faculty member, Aaron Burke, and receive 8 hours of credit. To view program details, click here.

Taslimi Foundation donates to UCLA’s Iranian Studies Program

January 2011

The UCLA Iranian Studies Program, housed in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, is pleased to announce the Taslimi Lectureship on the Baha’i Faith in Iran endowment.  This generous gift will significantly broaden and enhance the scope of Iranian studies at UCLA.  It will enable the Iranian Studies Program to hire a distinguished lecturer with expertise on the Baha’i faith in Iran. Additionally, The Taslimi Lectureship will facilitate development of new curriculum and open those courses to a broader audience, including Study of Religion majors.

The Taslimi Foundation was founded in 1996 by UCLA alumni, Shidan Taslimi (‘76 ‘78 Engineering), Mehran Taslimi (‘81 Engineering), Susanne Taslimi (‘74 Psychology) and Laila Taslimi (‘82 Theatre, ’98 Education).

The Taslimi Lectureship will commence in fall 2011 with special lectures and courses featuring prominent scholars in the Baha’i Faith.

UCLA and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures are deeply grateful to the Taslimi family and the Taslimi Foundation for their visionary gift and for partnering with the university to achieve excellence.

Professor Hossein Ziai has been elected as President of Société Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences et de la Philosophie Arabes et Islamiques (S.I.H.S.P.A.I.).

SIHSPAI is the foremost international academic society that is firmly based on rationalist principles in the study of Persian and Arabic Islamic philosophical and scientific heritage and does not allow apologetic nor polemic views obscure academic research, publications and conferences.  A conference is forthcoming.

 

Our graduate student David Bennett (ABD) and former graduate student Ahmed Alwishah (Assistant Professor at Pitzer College) successfully presented papers at the 8^th International Colloquium of the SIHSPAI on: Philosophy and Science in Classical Islamic Civilisation (London: December 3-6, 2010).  They were also unanimously voted in as members of SIHSPAI.

THE UCLA CENTER FOR JEWISH STUDIES

VITERBI VISITING PROFESSOR IN MEDITERRANEAN JEWISH STUDIES

The UCLA Center for Jewish Studies invites applications for the Viterbi Visiting Professor in Mediterranean Jewish Studies during the 2011-12 academic year.

 

UCLA's Dept. of Special Collection's Center for Primary Research and Training has recently created a short film to explain their work at the Center and how graduate students from all departments at UCLA are integrated into their mission of accessibility and inter-disciplinary dialogue by giving graduate students the opportunity to gain primary text experience to complement their classroom experience.

The first clip is an introduction to the CFPRT and their projects past and present. The subsequent clips (nos. 2-5) each highlight a project completed at the CFPRT by a UCLA graduate student, who explains in their own words their experience working with primary sources and the resources of the CFPRT.